AT THE centre of Lachlan Goudie’s breezy and readable book The Story of Scottish Art, the central paradox of a cultural conundrum — the non-existence of Scottish art — is served up on a plate.
The Scottish attitude to art has never recovered from the Scottish Inquisition that was the Calvinist Reformation led by John Knox. He and his followers destroyed the images that decorated churches, and forbade “Pope-ish” representations of religious themes.
The deadly influence of Knox lingers on in Free Church congregations and in the national psyche as wilful philistinism — a deliberate ignorance of, and entrenched scepticism towards, art.